


Champagne and Ice

by mem0



Series: Klelijah Translations [9]
Category: The Originals (TV), The Vampire Diaries & Related Fandoms, The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: AU, M/M, Mysticism, Translation, non-vamp AU, мистика
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-20 17:36:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20679272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mem0/pseuds/mem0
Summary: Klaus is a specialist in solving people’s problems, beggary, and solitude. He doesn’t believe in curses, but curses, it seems, believe in him.Translation from the Russian (перевод с русского).





	Champagne and Ice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jaejandra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaejandra/gifts).
  * A translation of [Шампанское и лед](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3098636) by [jaejandra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaejandra/pseuds/jaejandra). 

_Everyone gets the devil he deserves.  
Arturo Pérez-Reverte_

The feeling against the tips of his fingers is soft and smooth. Klaus is ready to wail aloud, to tremble, to sell his soul (though that, most likely, is already unnecessary), just to make sure it doesn’t end. Because any phenomenon, any caprice, any deadlock always ends, completely and entirely. The awareness of that only crushes him more, and Klaus feels stuck between the millstones of Fate, an implacable bitch with a nasty joke in mind.

“Look at me,” Elijah near growls, and Klaus submits.

* * *

Driving the Cadillac along the dusty road is fairly exhausting. Klaus Mikaelson, hereditarily unlucky but with the looks of a model, and also just a mage, only barely controls his drowsiness. The surroundings are wild, everything is overgrown with tall weeds, and it’s already been many miles since he last saw a house.

Klaus is driving at a minimal speed. He tried to speed forward, but the landscape is unchanging, so extra effort is completely useless. The most important thing is to conserve his gas and his clarity of judgement. So that evil cycle of images, thoughts and emotions doesn’t steal up into his mind, where any shadow scares you so much you want to get down and lay there. And how could you lie down here, really.

Klaus has been running from old age and feebleness for years. After all, when you’re running, you feel like you’re moving forward.

Klaus throws a glance at the mirror, like an exemplary idiot, wrinkles his brow, and remembers right away that wrinkling is bad. Today’s supply of adrenaline has been received and is slowly dispersing. His neuroses set in with a new strength, surrounding him, leaving him unable to breathe. His head pounds and pulses: maybe it’s not that Klaus Mikaelson lost his way (because his phone is as dead as the devil, and what GPS could you have in a 1974 Cadillac?), maybe this isn’t just the middle of nowhere, but the latest magical trap? He can attract trouble like no one else, after all, he’s a specialist in solving people’s problems, beggary and solitude.

His eyes start to tire. Klaus takes a deep breath and approaches the curb, stopping the car. By all accounts, he just needs to sleep a bit, then do some thinking and change directions. And just throw all this nonsense about a trap out of his mind.

Klaus is a specialist in human misery. He appears in people’s lives for a second, often completely unnecessarily or even for the worse, and then moves on, without reckoning the corpses or the saved souls left behind. Now he needs to lie down a bit, but his back starts to hurt at just the thought of leaning back in his seat. And what if someone decides to rob the idiot huddled up in this timeless middle of nowhere. So Klaus starts the engine (after the second attempt, who would’ve thunk it), seizes hold of the wheel with his numb fingers and drives, squashing the advancing weariness and thoughts about Silent Hill, eternal and plaguing him, because the parallel just begs to be drawn, he can’t ignore it. Fog is the only thing missing for the full picture.

Klaus doesn’t feel himself, because the most frightening misfortune (and, simultaneously, the most frightening curse) is getting lost in windmills of his mind, not differentiating reality from the imagined. That’s why the tall weeds and the almost purple shade of the world are frightening. Klaus needs to eat, Klaus needs to sleep his full – and, as though out of spite…

A car rushes by, Klaus stops driving from side to side, presses on the gas and flies on.

* * *

In his trunk, Klaus has ancient diamonds (well, like ancient, they’re nineteenth century), which are absolutely certainly cursed, an original Clyfford Still (damned scribbles) and ten thousand dollars. With such a collection, and given a certain convergence of events, the only place one could end up would be Silent Hill, but Klaus – with all his neuroses – isn’t superstitious. And if the painting and jewels had power over the local rich not-quite plantation owner, then it was only because of his high level of suspiciousness. In the end, curses are passed on to those who believe in them.

Klaus only believes that curses are passed on. Not to him, no. He’s a normal guy, with a degree from NYU, a normal family, and a normal, annoying mother. He doesn’t have any legacy through the generations. So what in the devil kind of curses could there be in the era of historical materialism? Klaus tries to remember why he knows about historical materialism and why he always jokes about it with his clients, but has no success.

His eyes are threatening to peel off – oh, the joys of hysterical capitalism in the form of ridiculous Systane eyedrops! – and for the first time that day Klaus swears at himself. Ten thousand dollars – that’s well and good, it’ll last for a few months of a comfortable life, but he could’ve gone without fooling around, couldn’t he? Waited for a taxi that the wuss would’ve paid for anyway and not pointed at the first Cadillac he saw with the words “that’s cursed too, where did you get it?” The boy bought it, of course. How not to buy it, when practically all your vital systems stop functioning at the age of thirty-two, and your last hope, a sorcerer (ah, those girls, is there anyone they won’t recommend) arrives, sorts through your great-grandmother’s diamonds, looks at a painting – and suddenly things become easier, your blood pressure falls to a normal level, your heart stops missing beats, and your liver and spleen start on a normal course of existence. At that rate, you’ll even sign away your home, not to mention a retro-car.

Klaus isn’t a bad person, but he’s tired, and with his earnings he’ll never see such a car. He comes across rich little not-quite plantation owners once a year, and between them Klaus makes ends meet off of what his other clients give him. He’s not going to rob a single mother or a seventy-year-old granny, after all. And he’d wanted that Cadillac like the devil … And now, of course, the universe is paying him back. The universe, wonder of wonders, is a woman – and what a bitch, too.

Klaus takes a deep breath and feels the irrational desire to stop and throw the diamonds out onto the road, but he can’t risk it. As it is, he’s on shaky ground with his nominally good deeds. No one and nothing will forgive him for screwing around with cursed objects. And what if some idiot picks them up and dies on the spot.

His admission of guilt slightly relieves his conscience, and Klaus gives up the appropriated Cadillac as a bad job. The tall weeds and purple surroundings finally give way to something seemly; traces of human activity are visible here.

The old radio puffs out something about rose champagne on ice, and Klaus smiles. He knows how to talk with the universe; maybe he can’t always tell apart the nuances of meaning, but that he knows how to do it is absolutely certain. It seems that the universe has forgiven him. Very, very soon he’ll come across some pleasant motel where he will charge his phone, and a charming girl will be sitting there, and she’ll pour him something to drink and feed him.

* * *

“Well fuck!” Klaus guffaws without holding back. “So I stole it, I stole it. What do you want from me?”

The owner of the house raises his perfectly outlined brows, and Klaus catches himself admiring his beauty. That’s a completely normal thing. Klaus is, of course, strictly interested in women, but that ginger bitch Letizia broke his heart (by the fact that she didn’t live up to the ideal, and she certainly didn’t suit the role of a soulmate at all), and Klaus urgently needs to restore the aesthetic balance in his organism.

“What pronouncements I hear.”

Klaus mirrors the other man’s expression and rolls his eyes:

“Elijah, as though you don’t swear.”

Elijah smiles in response, absentmindedly and distractedly, and Klaus thinks slightly drunkenly about how lucky he was. His gas ran out at the most inappropriate moment (linguistic idiocy: are there actually appropriate moments?), and Klaus tried for a long time to squeeze something out of the worn-out engine. Then he climbed out of the car, looked around, and – fortune did forgive him after all – saw the house. Quite a habitable place, judging by its appearance. This is a terrible backwoods, of course, but there wasn’t a choice of locations. Klaus just needed to reach the owner and ask for a phone. Or go into the house and call from there. What the devil is the difference.

Elijah starts slightly, as though surfacing from his thoughts with difficulty, and smiles again. Klaus, for no reason, for nothing, remembers some idiotic app on his phone, the Luscher test, which time after time gives him the same result: “A need for contact with people with just as high moral and aesthetic standards,” and traces the man with his gaze.

“Listen, I didn’t wake you, right?” You couldn’t think up a worse question, but Klaus knocked for so long, and spent so long estimating how best to break the lock, that he had already stopped waiting. But suddenly a man in a perfect light-grey suit appeared on the threshold and stared at him, as though looking at a ghost.

Klaus is drifting along the border of reality and dreams. Elijah poured him some wonderfully mature whiskey, Elijah gave him a phone, Elijah proposed he spend the night when the taxi from the nearest little city answered in a tired girl’s voice that they would only pick him up in the morning. So Klaus is feeling good, he couldn’t be better. Silent Hill is over, and a new horror movie hasn’t started either. He doesn’t sense any bad intentions emanating from Elijah, just agitated boredom, light mystery, and some heat. Klaus, stupidly, lays everything out to him, and – as proof – drags out the canvas. Elijah holds it in his hands for a few minutes, Klaus keeps an eye on him with worry, Elijah should barf, but instead he’s caught in a fit of coughing and throws the painting away from himself.

Klaus rushes to pick it up, takes it to the car, and locks the trunk. He comes back fearful, afraid to be unwanted in this house, where he was greeted like the best of friends. But Elijah raises his brows once again, takes a gulp from his glass and calmly admits that Klaus knows how to practice sorcery.

In the morning, a tired man drives Klaus, as well as the canvas and the diamonds, to the nearest little city, while the Cadillac stays as a present to Elijah – Klaus sensibly reasons that he shouldn’t return for it, the universe wouldn’t forgive it.

* * *

Klaus tries to shove the painting off on his acquaintance Jack, after all, he has a whole collection of such canvases – and a bulletproof aura that sucks everything in, but Jack is obstinate and doesn’t want it. A drunken soirée is audible beyond the wall of his office – the latest artist made the latest breakthrough. Life is just passing Klaus by.

“Dude, listen, c’mon, help me out. Take it for free. Where could I put it?”

“No, you listen, Nik. I’m still surprised that with that painting, those diamonds, and that Cadillac, you didn’t drive straight into hell or to Hotel California. Everything here is pretty bad. You’re saved, of course, by the fact that you’re an idiot and you help people. But you should take care, too, yeah? I saw those rocks on Maggie. Listen, well, she’s just a bitch, just wearing curses instead of a fucking _brassiere_, and they’re enough support, god damn it, they are! But where’re you off to. Burn the shit out of the fucking thing.”

“Idiot,” Klaus groans, and suddenly inopportunely remembers the name of his degree.

“I’m not suicidal.”

Klaus leaves the office, slamming the door, hurries onto the street past overdressed drunk girls and tries to catch his breath.

“Listen,” someone says, almost in his ear. “You forgot something.”

Klaus starts and turns around. Right beside him, within arm’s reach, stands Elijah. In a new suit and with a glass of champagne.

“But…”

“No ‘buts.’ It’s good that I have enough money to find a sorcerer by the name of Klaus. Since you ran off so early in the morning, abandoned your car, left a note. What, do I look like some girl to be wooed with a Cadillac the morning after?”

The outdated expression drives Klaus a little crazy, actually he’s just going crazy in general. Elijah seems like a fairytale, and Klaus, like any normal mage, loves miracles to the point of madness. Except the thing is that it’s not miracles he survives on the whole year, but sorcery, and even on Christmas Eve… He always has to exorcise someone from someone or other.

“I can’t have that car, Elijah, I stole it.”

Elijah just raises his eyebrows in response and slightly shakes his head. He doesn’t approve, of course. But much more heat is coming from him than last time, and that heat meets an answering wave coming from Klaus, hits against it, smashes into pieces, turning into a fine mist, accumulates – and forms a supernova. Klaus barely restrains from recoiling. It’s too similar to love. But Elijah – in addition to beauty, intellect, and money – also has some body parts that don’t interest Klaus. He had the luck to be born straight.

Elijah smiles absentmindedly and completely innocently, and shakes a key ring. Klaus snorts and thinks that instead of one problem he now has three. He takes the keys, and looks around in search of the Cadillac. He asks himself how Elijah arrived. He finds the answer and actually stamps a foot. No, he only had the painting: now he has the painting, the car and Elijah, devil take him.

“Shall I take you home?”

For some reason it couldn’t sound more dirty. Well yeah, because Elijah’s house is two-hundred miles away, and for some reason he drove in the Cadillac, and…

“Is that a proposal?” Elijah smiles mildly, drinking from his glass.

And Klaus is broken to pieces. He’s a damn empath, he feels everything around him, and, of course, he can’t not feel how the little bubbles of champagne stroke the throat of this strange man, how he almost chokes, taking too abrupt of a mouthful. But the thing is that Klaus’s throat is more sensitive, and, indeed, he can’t stop coughing. He’s only ever been in such an idiotic situation one other time, and then it was a girl and an orgasm, but here for some reason it turns out stupider and more embarrassing.

“Get lost,” Klaus says in response and heads down the stairs to the nearest subway station. He finally came up with a way to rid himself of the painting, and everything else can just wait.

* * *

Klaus is hard. It’s not as though that’s bad, but he’s hard because in his dream, Elijah’s tongue and lips were caressing him, because he did it so well that it was actually awful, because underneath the perfectly-ironed suit there was a beautiful body and wide, slanting shoulders, and the tattoo of a small snake running across his arm.

Klaus feels very bad. He has a magical hangover – giving away the painting would have been the perfect scenario, but he had to do what he had to do. A little black magic, a drop of white magic, pissing away a little luck – and that’s that. Clyfford Still could tire anyone out. But you couldn’t imagine a worse feeling.

And the whole night, the whole, endless night, he had the same exact dream. Klaus moans and internally prays to all the gods, who knows, maybe someone will even hear him. Dionysus clearly laughs in response, and Klaus tells them all to fuck off. He takes two deep breaths. He thinks about all kinds of distracting things, like the price of gas and the fact that his money will run out soon. He gets even harder, because, deep down, moans and feelings tear at his subconscious. And then, Klaus, screwing his eyes shut, touches himself with one hand. Perspiration runs along the bridge of his nose, he feels bad, embarrassed, and, oh good, _good, _and he comes, like he did at fifteen, from a few dozen ragged motions. 

* * *

“You know, this is just impolite,” Elijah sighs, and Klaus thinks that he’s done it, he’s finally lost his mind and everything attached.

He’s at the exit of a gigantic, very expensive house. The owners complained about specters and legged it just in case, and now this whole hacienda is at his disposal. Rain is pouring outside of the window, while he walks through the empty house, from floor to floor, and searches for the infamous ghosts. For now he feels unpleasant intentions on the part of distant relatives – and no devilry.

But then the doorbell rings.

On the threshold stands Elijah. Behind him a lightning bolt sinks into the ground, and Klaus barely keeps a hold of himself. Somewhere in the background even the damn Cadillac is looming; but the whole foreground is occupied by a wet, angry Elijah. He’s in a dinner jacket with an undone bowtie and an unbuttoned shirt. Water spills across his temples, pours along his neck and whispers, whispers, whispers. Nonsense, vulgarity, advice.

“Fuck someone at a party, rich boy?” Klaus crosses his arms across his chest.

And Elijah hits him across the cheekbone at full force. And then, just the same, at full force, kisses him**. **And Klaus just fucking gobsmacked, pushing Elijah away from himself. His head is ringing, but he’s sensible enough for a few questions.

“Have you gone fucking crazy? Are you following me?”

“And why would I need to follow you.” Elijah frowns.

“Fuck, I’ll kill whoever’s narcing on me.”

Elijah watches him attentively, as though peering into his soul. Klaus belatedly realizes that he’s hard again. And he goes red, whispers curses.

“Do you think that’ll help?” Elijah asks skeptically, but then turns away nonetheless and leaves.

“I’m into girls, girls!” Klaus yells after him.

Elijah slows his pace, and Klaus catches a hold of himself, his own hand, in the most literal sense of the word, in order to stop from rushing after him. Nonetheless he goes out onto the porch and watches Elijah standing with his back to him for a long time, stares at the back of his wet head, and almost breaks his own fingers.

“No,” Elijah says, turning. “You’re into those who run you to the ground with their rejections. Those that you can love for yourself, suffering. Those who always say “no.” Of course I’m not to your taste, Mikaelson. But I can arrange rejections and all the rest. I can arrange things so that you suffer.”

“Just go, you,” Klaus gets angry. “Just, go.”

“Your wish is law,” Elijah answers, and goes.

_Towards him. _

Klaus curses himself with everything he has. Well, yes, and who can resist the wish of a sorcerer, stated and bound in words.

“And what about the rejections and the suffering?” Klaus asks, when his shirt is already lying on the floor, and Elijah’s neck is covered in kisses – the way it should be, and the way it’s right for it to be.

“How about we arrange for that later,” the other man lightly tosses out.

And Klaus submits and even lets himself be fucked, completely forgetting himself, entangled in Elijah’s caresses.

The feeling against the tips of his fingers is soft and smooth. Klaus is ready to wail aloud, to tremble, to sell his soul (though that, most likely, is already unnecessary), just to make sure it doesn’t end. Because any phenomenon, any caprice, any deadlock always ends, completely and entirely. The awareness of that only crushes him more, and Klaus feels stuck between the millstones of Fate, an implacable bitch with a nasty joke in mind.

“Look at me,” Elijah near growls, and Klaus submits.

He raises his eyes, teeth biting into Elijah’s shoulder, feeling an unbearable desire and just as unbearable a shame. Knowing that Elijah will leave, like everyone leaves, and still letting him do the unthinkable.

“Come on, Klaus,” Elijah growls, when he has no strength left whatsoever. Elijah kisses his neck and moves quickly, but precisely, fingers against his tip, rubbing where he needs it, and Klaus finally loses his mind.

* * *

In the morning Elijah is gone, but the Cadillac is there with a note and a smiley face. It’s something hard to portray on a keyboard, with a little grin and horns.

Klaus immediately gets trashed out of his fucking mind on bourbon from the hospitable bar, calls the owners and gets into his Cadillac to go home.

The deed is done, his clients can now be fruitful and multiply, without even thinking about the ghostly intentions of their cousins. What is there to say: everything was swept away by the collapse in energies that Klaus brought about in the house without even meaning to. Or… meaning to?

Elijah doesn’t turn up for two weeks, and Klaus thinks that he’s going to go crazy any moment. That he needs to give up, search for an approach to the mad millionaire, drive to him and literally fall at his feet. He’s not planning on doing that at all, but he wants to – so much that the tips of his fingers tremble.

Klaus goes to the bar, picks up a green-eyed blonde girl and spends the whole night unable to escape Elijah’s phantom touches. In essence, he’s sleeping with him again, because every touch invokes such a wave of empathy that Klaus doesn’t know how to go on: empathy works in the present, not in the past, and clearly should not invoke hallucinations.

Meanwhile, it works and does invoke them. Recollections of the way Elijah unrolled the condom along his shaft, how he kissed him (for god’s sake, sweet, long, slow, like Klaus was a fucking teenage girl), how he spread him out along the bed so that not the slightest spot of his body was left untouched, how he smiled to himself at something or other; and a series of sensations come in a wave, straight from the past, Klaus is slowly rocked to sleep, and the blonde doesn’t exist. The only things that exist are his pleasant shame and his pleasant, burning desire.

In the morning, Klaus jumps into the Cadillac, without opening the doors, and races to Elijah’s house at full speed. This time there are no purple surroundings, nor the empty roads, nothing of the sort. Neither is there, strange as it is, a house at its previous location. Klaus stands at the curb and feels a cold sweat running across the back of his neck towards his back. His tires squeal and he drives to the taxi company. At least that is at its previous place. True, the driver says that he picked Klaus up from a broken down car. He has never, of course, heard so much as a peep about the house. With wooden fingers, Klaus dials Jack and asks after the list of the soirée’s invitees. Jack groans and swears (_and who’s he fucking in the middle of the day, anyway, _flashes through Klaus’s mind), but he nonetheless sends the damn list to Klaus by email.

There’s no one there starting with an “E.”

Klaus drives home, autopilot turned on (one of sorcery’s useful functions, phantom hand motions), barely coping with his rising nausea. There aren’t that many explanations, and Klaus suspects that he thought it all up, that he really had been the victim of a hex – ah, damned witches! – then he looks at the wheel of the car and realizes that he couldn’t have simply carried it out of this backwoods, so that means that Elijah is real. At least in one sense of the word.

His linguistic analysis turns on all on its own. Klaus speeds to his modest little apartment, tossing down his furniture and breaking the things that fall under his feet. With shaking fingers he feels about under the sink; he finds candles and black chalk. He hates practical magic, it’s a sure way to expose yourself, a sure way to end up on the crossroads of the universe, and there it’s just a waiting game until you’re run over. But he stubbornly traces old signs, forgotten by all, arranges the candles, searches for a match, rushing about as though delirious. Just there’s nothing to say. It’s paradoxical: after all, he’s always been a master with words. He always used to be capable.

Nothing comes to mind except “Come.”

“Where to?” Immediately sounds from behind.

Klaus is completely shaken, and the moment he spends turning around becomes an eternity. Elijah stands right in front of him. As he should, not in the center of forgotten knowledge, not among the candles. Anciently perfect, _perfectly – ancient? _

“To me,” Klaus lets out, and Elijah takes a step and then kisses him, hard and imperious, to the point that Klaus’s start to shake in his shoes with desire.

The desire to be crushed, to be gripped, to be owned. The desire for his soul to be ripped to pieces.

It takes all of Klaus’s self-control and all his willpower to compose himself. It also probably takes a little of his luck. He holds Elijah back with his hands, looks into his eyes and realizes that he’s drowning. He throws back his head and swears soundlessly.

Fingers immediately find his neck.

“If you’re expecting guests, you should shave,” Elijah says casually, and the smile in his voice is audible.

“You’re the devil, right?” Klaus asks, not bringing himself to lower his head.

“Does it matter?”

“You wouldn’t believe it,” he slips into hysterical laughter.

“Well I haven’t believed in anything in a very long time.”

Elijah goes silent, and Klaus tries to decipher a hint in the ceiling, screws up his eyes to the point of tears, and examines the plaster above him. The words should start flowing any second now, he’s a linguist after all, devil take him, _oh, god, what am I thinking, don’t take me, _he perceives the world through words and nomenclature, he gives a name to a phenomenon – and the phenomenon comes to life, begins to exist.

The ceiling of the old house is silent, well, what could you say in this situation.

“You forced this.”

“What, what did I force?” Klaus squeezes it out of himself in syllables, lowering his head, staring into those dark eyes, fingers meeting that cheek.

“What didn’t you.” Elijah, or whatever he’s called, looks at him, unfocused and absentmindedly.

“Elijah, please, answer me.”

“And what should I answer, you yourself know everything. Except, perhaps, the fact that…” Elijah hesitates and rubs his cheek against Klaus's hand, “that it’s very hard to reach me when I’m there.” He nods at the floor. “And to think up and pull such a way to reach me out of nowhere… You’re a real talent.”

He looks at Klaus, tenderly and warmly. What, is he in love or something? It’s hard to stagger Klaus, but he is deprived even of his eternal weapon, words, and is silent, looking at the other in response. He feels the smoothness of Elijah’s cheek beneath his fingers. He mentally picks through the works of the classics and his contemporaries. About the devil, love, and death. There are so many of them, it’s such frightening banality, that in the end everything turns into a kaleidoscope of images and symbols. But Elijah stays, and Klaus nonetheless stretches out for a kiss, sensing heat, and, probably, love, but –

he suddenly buckles, as though from a blow. He sees the probabilities pretty well. His whole life, without a woman, without a child, and then death. Period. For the devil, maybe even _his personal devil, _a moment will pass, while for him, it’ll be a life. Wasted on total fuckery.

And how to come to terms with his machinations? Klaus is lost, Klaus feels awful.

“Indeed,” Elijah says, not taking the slightest step to meet him. “Indeed, how can you overcome my machinations.”

Klaus finds a support for his back and stares into those dark eyes, managing, with difficulty, to take in a breath. Of course, that isn’t true. It’s a comfortable, very human lie. All curses, all that fucked up shit, is the work of human hands. But what about the obligations? Always and forever – with something evil?

“No obligations. Sleep with me and you’ll get endless money, if that’ll make things easier for you. And you can comfort yourself with the hope that I don’t love you.”

Elijah turns around and leaves, ignoring both the symbols and the candles, and Klaus slips down the wall.

* * *

“How was your day?” Elijah asks indifferently, either pretending or truly feeling nothing.

Keeping silent, Klaus goes to the bar, takes some champagne, and shoots the cork out randomly. Sleeping with the devil sickens him; he wants a real relationship. And anyway, his devil is somehow unlucky. He’s beautiful, handsome, outrageously intelligent, but unhappy, good god, unhappy and tormented, either by his own conscience or by human loathsomeness. True, he fucks divinely, just the way Klaus, tired of their partings and meetings, needs it. If Elijah was death, Klaus very likely wouldn’t say no to sleeping with him for a whole ten thousand years, like in that story. But the other side and ten thousand million years is one thing. This world and the thirty to forty years left to Klaus are a totally different one. With luck, he has a half century. Though sorcerers don’t live that long.

“It was a normal day. Go on already, throw yourself at me, you _beast,_” Klaus says through clenched teeth.

And for once Elijah behaves himself like a beast. He tears off Klaus’s shirt, presses his back against the wall, doesn’t kiss him, but bites at his neck (he knows, bitch, he knows, because he knows everything, that Klaus likes it like that, that Klaus wants it like that, rough, so that he has to submit and for a change doesn’t have to think or produce names), grabs him by the hips, growls, while Klaus exposes his neck to his bites, and he forces Klaus to grab around his waist with his legs –and where on earth did he get such strength – pressing Klaus to him so tight that Klaus’s bones literally start to crunch.

Klaus tries to compose himself, but where’s he going, everything’s gone to the devil, and he’s in this new house, being thrown forcefully onto the bed, and he’s almost not afraid, while Elijah is unfastening his pants, and if… No, don’t think it, after all, he doesn’t…

Elijah is fast, but tender, doesn’t enter him roughly at all, and, with his poorly focusing gaze, all Klaus can see is a small snake running across the other man’s shoulders.

* * *

His business grows with every day, and Klaus rushes about from here to there in business class of annoying airplanes – and helps people. Every hour – he helps people. He has no lack of clients, both rich and poor; Klaus’s dream has come true. The only thing he’s lacking is warmth and love, but that, probably, isn’t so important. Elijah is always waiting, Elijah always gives him almost what he needs, and kisses him almost to death.

As for machinations – well, now human machinations aren’t an obstacle for Klaus, and he’s, probably, happy. He’s afraid to name himself as such and jinx it.

“So where’s that painting?” Jack asks when Klaus drops by his place for no reason, just to have a drink and a chat.

“You might as well ask where Letizia is. As I imagine it, they’re both somewhere in nonexistence.”

“But that’s not true,” Jack becomes indignant, pouring more into their glasses. “You bragged to me that you’d gotten rid of her. Of the picture, I mean, fuck, I can’t talk.”

Klaus hums sympathetically.

“Yeah, everything’s fine. It’s lying around somewhere in my old apartment. It’s totally safe.”

“Right, like Maggie’s diamonds.”

Klaus shrugs his shoulders. Well yeah, it’s safe, well yeah, Maggie’s diamonds. Except they’re not Maggie’s diamonds, but…

“Listen, I’d fuck her.”

Klaus chokes on the vintage whiskey, and spits half of it out onto the polished countertop. How’s that for news.

“Well yeah, as though you didn’t know,” Jack frowns, displeased. “So where’s the painting?”

“Your damn painting’s up your fucking ass!” Klaus shouts, excessively nervous. “Have you lost your fucking mind? We studied together, the three of us, we were friends, the three of us, and now you what?”

“Say thanks that it’s not you,” Jack jokes darkly and finishes his bourbon in one swig. “Who’re you fucking now anyway?”

A honk suddenly sounds in the courtyard, and Klaus feels an icy casing rolling across his skin. The sound is familiar, it’s the Cadillac. Why so suddenly…

Probably because of the drunken text from an hour and a half ago. Possibly. Certainly. Not possibly and certainly not?

Klaus awaits everything to follow with horror.

“Oh my,” Jack breaks into a drunken smile. “I guess we’re linguists for a reason, huh? All I had to do was mention ‘fucking,’ and the car’s already here. So what’s her name? I’ll invite her in, how awkward.”

He returns after a few minutes. What a pity, devil take him, since Klaus had almost managed to think up a way to sink into the ground and disappear. Though, actually, that isn’t guaranteed either. You could sink, but some things down there might catch you.

Some things here vacillate at the threshold and clearly aren’t resolved to enter. Klaus watches, heart growing numb, searching for a comment, a response. He’s really sick of being unloved and getting rejected. And the time when that was necessary is past, anyway. True, now you can’t change the conditions of the agreement or…

Klaus comes to his senses and realizes that Jack is either horrified or delighted, or – understanding.

“May I,” Elijah begins, and Jack immediately reacts.

“Oh you, of course, please. Thanks, that is. Take Niklaus, he’s all yours, I make no claim to him, I never did, and I didn’t get him that drunk either.”

It comes out impossibly shameful, and Klaus hides his head the whole way back home. Yes, because he’s a drunken pig. Yes, because Elijah was always right about his egoistical love for his own sake. Yes, because Elijah went along with all of his desires, and now Klaus has stopped wanting them.

His stomach churns; Elijah is silent. He stops in the courtyard of their home, an entire castle, beautiful and very expensive, and Klaus, of course, vomits right onto the lawn. His organism is really begging for suffering, pain, and for Elijah to finally leave him.

Elijah reaches out a hand and leads him into the house, thrusts Klaus under the cold water of the shower and lays with him, completely clothed, until Klaus finally blacks out.

* * *

Of course, Klaus can’t bear such a shame, and he speeds away to nowhere, to his old apartment, without even taking the Cadillac. He writes a note, almost choking on blood and almost realizing that he’s doing everything wrong.

But in his old apartment there is comfort and peace, in his old apartment are his old clients, and Klaus, of course, doesn’t take even a penny from them; in some two days everything gets back on track, though the benefits of fucking the devil are obvious: he himself understands that perfectly, and doesn’t try to get him back.

What Klaus doesn’t expect is the middle-of-the-night call from Maggie with her confession.

“Sweetheart, you’ve just gone crazy,” Klaus says affectionately. “Sweetheart, both of you have just gone crazy, you and Jack.”

Next follows a halting monologue about how Maggie has always felt, and simply never said. Words are that kind of joke: once said, you can never take them back.

Klaus looks gloomily at the floor and thinks about how best to lie in order not to offend his old school friend and simultaneous wonderful bearer of cursed jewelry. His eyes fall upon the Still painting, rolled up like a log, and Klaus kicks at it in powerless rage.

“Nik, are you here? Say something,” Maggie begs, and then suddenly exhales strangely, and while words and events begin to come into order before Klaus in a fine, straight line, she starts to disconnect on the other end of the connection.

The problem isn’t the connection, no, the problem is that something is strangling her by the throat, clenching her tighter and tighter, and Klaus finally learns what deathly horror is. His arms and legs are frozen, he can’t do anything, he can’t think up anything, panic burns in him, like the house, like…

He comes to his senses, remembering the flames of hell, and, of course, Elijah. He realizes that he’s rooted to the ground, that he can’t move from his spot, and his apartment is cheerily ablaze, spontaneously ignited from the original Still. Somewhere over there, foam is coming from Maggie’s mouth, he doesn’t know it, but he feels it; the curse got to them both. He can think about love triangles later. In the next world. In hell?

Klaus tries to force the fire to abate, but it licks the apartment, caresses it, steals up to his legs. A curse has a defined working mechanism. If you’ve already fallen into it, then there’s no way to fix the situation from within.

He can try to fix something else, but Klaus suddenly has no strength and his hope is gone. Not that he ever had an excess of it. Maggie is being choked to death by the diamond necklace, and, maybe, if he dies first, she’ll have the luck to become Jack’s personal zombie.

It turns out that there’s nothing left to do but burn. Klaus stares stupidly at the floor and feels nothing, he can’t, he doesn’t want to. He terribly regrets that he never said one thing, _I don’t give a fuck that you’re the devil, just be with me, always be with me, without money or obligations, and then we’ll see what comes next, Elijah, we’ll sort things out where the wind takes us. I’m fucking sick of you not loving me._

The floor cracks and collapses.

* * *

Klaus rushes to Maggie’s house all in a lather, apparently having spent up all his strength and all his magic in order to lift the curse from the necklace. He is terrifyingly, wildly afraid that there’s a different mechanism at work in the case of things gifted by one’s own hands, but nonetheless calls on the diamonds to listen. He explains to them that they were fucking gypped, just like everyone in this story.

That Jack, the fucker, palmed off a fake not-quite plantation owner onto him, just to potentiate the operation of the two objects, the painting and the diamonds. To bank up the fire with Klaus’s hands. To rid himself of a rival and get the girl. But Klaus, there’s the rub, seized the Cadillac as well, and then he drove with all that and indeed arrived at… What more is there to say.

The diamonds, it seems, aren’t listening. Quarrelsome rocks.

Leaving the car with his shirt clinging to him, Klaus slowly goes up to the penthouse. He, of course, has the keys. He stands in front of the elevator’s silent door and just can’t enter it.

Yeah, her own elevator. Maggie, beautiful and rich. A bitch with a strikingly long neck. Jack, you cunt, how could you, why’d you do all this!

Klaus almost wails aloud – and already in the elevator, he sinks onto the floor and can’t hold back tears. He sobs bitterly and painfully for all those seconds that the car crawls upwards. He looks up and forces himself to watch the slowly opening doors.

“And we thought you weren’t coming,” Maggie chatters away with her legs in the air, sitting on the back of her couch.

Elijah is settled down nearby.

“Hey, El, listen, he was always like this. Hypersensitive, yeah, but to sob this much! And how do you two get along?”

“Oh, you!”

The world fades for a second from his joy and relief, and then Klaus is already fussing all about a laughing Maggie, trying to kill her, and not believing any of her arguments about a dropped connection and that it was him that didn’t answer the phone.

* * *

“I took care of Jack,” Elijah says, shrugging his shoulders. “If you want to see him you’re welcome to, but for now you don’t need to worry about anything. I’ll leave you two, you have a talk. You certainly have the subject matter.”

He leaves, and Klaus stares after him in confusion.

“Sweetheart, you’ve really shot yourself in the foot,” Maggie drawls slowly.

The diamond necklace is lying on the floor, completely harmless, and, obviously, wanted by no one.

“Meg, but…”

She looks at him skeptically:

“No ‘buts.’ I’m a fine specimen myself, of course, raising the question of that chronic crush. If I hadn’t – see, we’d have gotten away without all of this. But Jack! Fuck, Jack!”

Klaus shrugs his shoulders and feels his heart sinking. They were attentive to their best friend, that’s for sure. That he cursed two objects, and cursed them such, and…

“Sweetheart, I know what you’re thinking about. How about we decide that he’s an unbelievable fucker that decided to be the death of his two best friends. Notice that for some reason I never tried to win you with such methods.”

Klaus nods mechanically and suddenly realizes that she’s right. He returns to reality, shudders.

El… Elijah.

“Sweetheart,” Maggie says, straightening her dress. “Listen, but…”

“Did he leave something? Keys, or…”

Maggie fumbles about the dining table with one hand and hands him a key ring.

“Can I…” Klaus was about to begin, but today Maggie is at the top of her game:

“You have to. Look alive. Double time, march!”

She accompanies him to the elevator’s doors and kisses him chastely on the lips. She narrows her eyes. And tosses out: “You two’re cute,” in farewell.

* * *

The house is at its previous location, but Klaus doesn’t know how to reach Elijah. He probably didn’t even hear a single one of Klaus’s thoughts after all, was just looking out for him, _out of kindness, _and saw that Maggie was dying. A last deference to his… lover?

Klaus frowns and batters harder at the door. His irritation and hunger just anger him rather than hindering him.

“Elijah, listen, I’ll stay here til I die, even if you don’t decide to open up.”

It doesn’t work on Elijah. Klaus said that he’s going to die, but Elijah doesn’t care. Klaus leans his back against the door and slowly sinks down across it. With the firm intention to sit there until kingdom come.

But the wonders don’t think to end. The door suddenly swings open, and Klaus falls. Upside down, he sees Jack’s pale face.

“Don’t die here, he’ll be upset.”

“Jack, fuck!” Klaus jumps to his feet. “Did you totally lose your mind or something?”

“Well, it’s love, it happens,” Jack forces out.

And then Klaus realizes something: he is absolutely, unbelievably indifferent. He moves Jack to the side and enters the house. Without an invitation, of course, it looks the way it should. Some sort of road into hell. Klaus frowns, but goes. His steps reverberate echoingly under the stone arches. The lancet arches give way to broken stained-glass windows, statues are piled up one above the next; at least his legs know the way, glorious creations.

Klaus tries not to look to the sides. He has the impression that he’s intruding into an installation of someone else’s life, but nonetheless he looks around, going from hall to hall. Some places are empty and stink of mold, some are ruled by all the luxury of the baroque. Jack disappears along the way.

He finds Elijah in the farthest room, decorated with endless copies of that goddamn Still. The man is drinking whiskey, just like the first time they met, and beneath his white shirt, a snake is crawling along his shoulder. Only now Klaus sees that it’s on the brink of biting into Elijah’s carotid artery.

“Stop!” Klaus barks.

And everything stops. Including time, it seems. Elijah’s hand jerks, but it’s as though the glass is frozen in the air. Then he looks up, frowns, and shakes his head slightly.

“I…” Klaus begins.

“I know.”

“But…”

“The question is what you’re ready for now. Back then you thought you were dying, I don’t believe a word of it.”

Elijah looks uncertain.

A very heavy load is taken off of Klaus’s mind. It turns out that his devil is also insecure and… an idiot?

Verily.

“Elijah, let’s go, it’s boring here and Jack’s wandering around somewhere.”

Klaus extends a hand and waits.

Elijah peers into his eyes.

Klaus wants to say something about how much they should do and fix, but then he cuts himself short. The only thing that he actually wants is to spend the next three days in bed. And fuck the fact that he’s straight, honestly.

Elijah takes his hand and they make it to the exit much faster.

“Always, you hear,” Klaus says nonetheless, sitting down behind the wheel of the Cadillac.

Elijah laughs, and Klaus doesn’t need any other response.


End file.
